Jan 19, 2021
President Trump Banned From Twitter
After the attack on the Capitol and being impeached for a second time, President Trump has been banned or suspended from most major social media platforms. Many people say they are making it so that he can’t speak, even though that is not true. He can walk into the press room anytime he wants and talk to every American on their TV. With that being said, we are going to look at some of the major platforms that have banned President Trump.
Twitter was one of the most famous banning of President Trump. They announced it Friday, two days after the attack on the capital, that they would be permanently banning the president. In a statement, “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” This was such breaking news for two main reasons. Throughout his presidency that was the main way he communicated with the American people. The other main reason is that this is the largest action twitter has ever taken to block someone on their platform.
Facebook blocked President Trump from posting on his Facebook page, at least until the transition of power is completed. A Facebook post from CEO Mark Zuckerburg said, “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.” This comes after first taking down his post on Facebook about the Capitol attack. The next day he was banned until after the inauguration. it’s unclear at this time if it will be changed to permanently or until after the transition of power.
Snapchat
Snapchat also disabled his account after fears that it spread misinformation. In a statement a spokesperson from Snapchat said, “We can confirm that earlier today we locked President Trump’s Snapchat account.” Believe it or not, Snapchat was one of the first to take action against President Trump due to a different situation back in June. The company stopped promoting his account in discovery, citing threats on democracy as their reasoning. If you are not aware, discovery is the place where professionals and other people have their content promoted.
TikTok
TikTok also took action. They are removing content that violates the community guidelines, along with redirecting hashtags like #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty. In a statement from a TikTok spokesperson, “Hateful behavior and violence have no place on TikTok. Content or accounts that seek to incite, glorify, or promote violence violate our Community Guidelines and will be removed.” TikTok is one of the few apps that haven’t banned President Trump from their platforms.
Discord
Discord has also banned the server “The Donald”. In a statement Discord said, “While there is no evidence of the server being used to organize the Jan 6 riots, Discord decided to ban the entire server today due to its overt connection to an online forum used to incite violence and plan an armed insurrection in the United States.” Discord took these steps after an abundance of caution after it was discovered that this Discord was connected to the pro Trump social group “TheDonal.Win.”.
Pinterest has also been removing hashtags like #StopTheSteal since the election in November. President Trump does not have a Pinterest account, but Pinterest does not want their platform to be politically driven. In a statement, a spokesperson for Pinterest said, “Pinterest isn’t a place for threats, promotion of violence or hateful content.” another spokesperson said. “Our team is continuing to monitor and removing harmful content, including misinformation and conspiracy theories that may incite violence.”
Parler
It is worth mentioning that the popular social media platform Parler has been banned from Apple’s app store, as well as the google play store. This action was taken after it was determined that the app was being used as a popular form of communication among conservatives. Some of the discussions were surrounding the violence that was committed at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
The reason that these platforms and many others are doing this is so that more violence doesn’t take place on Inauguration Day and more mistrust doesn’t take place in our democracy or in the election.
